


What We Are Made Of

by FBIEpidemic



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: But Zola loves her family, it is kinda sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 04:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15502107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FBIEpidemic/pseuds/FBIEpidemic
Summary: Zola knows who she is. She knows the people that have made her who she is.





	What We Are Made Of

**Author's Note:**

> I made myself upset writing this

Life is summed up in the moments we most often forget. The things we don’t think about. It’s not about how old you were when you first started reading or if you can swim. The qualifications of life suck, it’s looking both ways before you cross the road and getting hit with an airplane. You didn’t ask for it and everyone makes sure you remember that. You just keep looking right and left and maybe one day you’ll learn to look up.

“It’s okay, Mom.” 

Zola never doubted the love her family had for even in the moments when her skin was so different from theirs that people stared. In moments when her adoption was in question was always ready to fight in her honor.

_“Excuse me?”_

_Alex wasn’t supposed to be picking her up. Mommy had promised she would be the one but Zola had also promised to not give Alex or anyone else a hard time when they have to babysit her. So Zola remains compliant. Even when Alex’s chest swells and his face flushes in that way that Zola knows means Alex is very mad._

_”This is Doctor Grey and Doctor Shepherd's daughter. I’m her uncle, sure that’s a little hard to understand but surely even without a high school diploma you can understand that.” Zola had thought his words were odd but they didn’t really mean anything to her._

_Alex just picked her up the same way he always did and carried her out the door without another door. He mumbled under his breath for a while about adoption and people._

_It was weird when she had to get a new daycare, though._

She knows them. Right side up and upside down. 

They make her feel comfortable.

_“Up ya’ go.” She’s at the dinner table, seating on two textbooks and her father’s newest medical journal. He doesn’t seem to mind._

_He smiles at her, tousling the hair that sits in disarray across her brow. “Whatcha wanna do, Zozo?” He pushes her tea set closer to her so that her small arms can reach them. She smiles broadly, displaying a pink tiara for him to wear, one that matches her own._

_He accepts it and lays it on the top of his dark hair,” thank you, Zozo.”_

They’re so much more than that. She’s more than that. She’s her father’s beautiful disaster headful of hair and his inability to do anything with her hair. The Barbie dolls he bought her to make her sit still long enough for him to practice the braids Bailey taught him. 

The smell of baby that comes home with Alex when he and her mother stayed up at night talking about everything and nothing. Laughter soft and muted making the best bedtime stories. The creaking of the stairs as they both come up the stairs because sometimes, after a hard day, Alex needs to hug a kid who isn’t sick.

Learning colors with Cristina on the couch. Black is the color of the dark curls that tumble and frame Cristina’s face. Red is Owen’s hair, Cristina grabbing his bicep, forcing his attention to them so that Zola could see the orangey red hair all over his head and chin. Blue is her father’s scrubs when he comes home soaked from the rain so engraved in whatever brilliant plan he’s conjured up this time. 

Warm hugs and soft chests when Owen holds her so tight she thinks she might break in half. The weird scent of the hospital that he can’t wash away with undertones of the woods. From walks that he doesn’t return from until he’s too exhausted to go any farther. It’s crushing hugs where she wonders how someone so muscley can be so soft.

Faded memories of two people so madly in love. Getting into candy with the silver-haired man with arms the size of her head and being told by the smaller, thinner woman that too many candies would hurt her tummy. Hands that never seemed to stray that far from the other and the way her mother cried when the woman died and the way her father cried when the silver-haired man died. The lack of proof that either of them ever existed… except for a single picture that she’s always been too afraid to ask about.

Fear coursing through her veins as Alex tries to usher her closer to her mother. The broken pieces of her mother but not her mother. Years passing before she could appreciate the sleepless nights, the constant uncertainty, and textbooks littering their living room for her to understand that her mother is a warrior. 

Maggie’s mother’s death making her chest swell understanding and the will to help. To be like her mother and father in whatever way that she can. Even if it’s simply trying to comfort her aunt because losing a parent is always hard.

Playing with Sofia in the backyard. Skinned knees and Arizona's coolest bandaids. 

Jackson’s fear of hurting her. Never willing to romp and put her in headlocks the way she wants him to. The sadness in his eyes after he became a parent and forced to come home with no bundles of joy. Working through that in their living room, helping her enunciate words far above her grade level.

Jokes that would have made Owen’s chest rumble with laughter and made Maggie shake her head. April performing silly skits and teaching Zola how to stand on her hands. Freaking out everyone Zola got the chance to show until Alex put a halt to the action with a winded lecture about bones and growth plates. She found it easier to just stop rather than risk upsetting him again.

Seating on the couch at Bailey’s house, her mother, and Bailey had a very meaningful conversation about her. Bailey coming back out and teaching her about what it means to be black and that it doesn’t matter what skin color she is because her father and her mother love her so much. That what some little boy said on the playground was foolish and damn him.

Hide and seek with no cheats. Climbing into boxes and Jo flying them to Mars, where the Martians would be in dire need of a president and would you look at that! Zola’s a perfect match! Alex jumping over the back of the couch, a roaring Martian eater that Zola must defeat to save her planet.

Plucking hard guitar strings with hurting fingertips, DeLuca urging her on. Her mother hating every second of it and unwilling to admit that she’s dumbstruck by her ability to make friend with anyone. 

She is alone now. Seating beside her dying mother. Uncertain if she should be glad that she can forget her family's deaths. That Zola is just a face in the crowd and that she can easily forget the people in her past. 

Alex was taken in a flash, a boom. He was there one moment and gone the next. Protecting kids is what he did and it wasn’t that surprising that it would kill him. A father, abusive and drunk, came calling for his son and Alex got in the way just long enough for it to cost him his life but security took the father away before he does any more damage.

Another shooting cost them lives. 

Jackson left, retired. He’d been in two shootings and he couldn’t handle it. She hadn’t seen him since.

DeLuca was in the ER, shielding a little girl with his body when the bullet caught him. Shock killed him, his unwillingness to put the girl in danger to help himself. She was able to sit with him before he died. He gave her his guitar. She still has it.

Owen was clipped. His lung punctured by a bullet he didn’t see coming. He lived for three years after that before a fatal concoction of pneumonia and bronchitis was too much for his weakened lungs. She was there when he died when he called out for Cristina and no longer even looked like the man she knew. 

Bailey fought the gunman. Yelling, screaming and fighting him. She was the reason he was handled, SWAT got to him just as her knees crumbled under her. She was well into her sixties when her heart finally stopped. She was doing what she loved, fighting for what she loved. 

The others… left, mostly. Maggie’s still around. Guilty because she doesn’t have the Alzheimer's gene.

“I need you to page Cristina.” Her mother urges, she had already seen Cristina and it’s easier if she’s not around. “If you’re new here, I can do it myself.”

Her mother remembers her prime the best. She’s stuck in the same loop. She’s got to tell Cristina that she’s the goddamn sun. That Ellis wouldn’t be proud of her. That Mark is dating someone on the other team and that Teddy freaking Altman and Henry are so adorable and Derek hates it. 

“It’s okay,” she repeats again, not even unsettled. “She’s on her way. She’s bringing Owen. They promise alcohol.”

Life is not about the tiny things. Your favorite book. What smell you think of when someone says home. That sweatshirt that smells safe. The place you go to when you’re unsure of everything else around you. These things will always mean more than wealth and status. It’s about the moments that stick with us when we forget everything else.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave your comments or ideas below!!!


End file.
